(!!!) wires are stiffened for implantation by temporarily attaching them to a micropipette guide with sucrose which subsequently dissolves in the brain!

the smooth sucrose (40 grams in 50ml of water heated to 118C) coating requires about a week of desiccation to become hard enough for insertion into the brain without premature softening. Sucrose becomes clear like glass once fully desiccated.

the air above the craniotomy is sufficiently humid to dissolve the sucrose if left there for more than a few seconds.

used a miniature single-channel FET amplifier as a headstage - only one channel out of 6 could be recorded at once :( Thus their reults only apply to the best of the microwires implanted - not to all of them.

recorded onto a mac quadra (hahah) 20khz 12 bit

applying 160ua microstimulation pulses can restore low (200kohm) electrode impedance. Recording quality was generally improved for a few days following stimulation but then returned to an asymptotic level with the impedance at approximately 900kOhm.

electrodes only seemed to last 5 weeks, whence they declined to about 27% yeild - see figure 8.